Getting Arab Voices into American High School Curriculums

GETTING ARAB VOICES INTO AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOL CURRICULUMS

BY MUNA AL-ALUL

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espite an American style of education and the fact that English is the language of instruction, Arab history, traditions, language and cultural values have always been an integral part of the identity of King’s Academy. It is no surprise then that King’s introduced a course in its English curriculum that actively reflects this vision.

King’s was determined to show that Arabic literature — whether written in Arabic and translated to English, or written from the outset in English — deserved to be covered in English

classes everywhere, just as much as any other world literature currently being taught in middle and high schools.

In 2016, two faculty members, Lilli Audeh and Rola Jaber, attended the annual convention of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) in Atlanta where they introduced “Arabic literature in a global context” via a poster presentation. The following year, King’s faculty returned to the 2017 NCTE convention in St. Louis and conducted a session entitled “Demythologizing the other: Voices from the Arab world.”

Delivering their presentation, the King’s teachers attempted to dispel some stereotypes by introducing their audience — a full house — to the Arab world, displaying a map of the region and explaining the huge geographical area — comprised of 22 countries across the Middle East and North Africa — and range of ethnicities and religions it encompasses.

“There is this stereotype that the Arab world is Muslim, period,” said English teacher Sharifa Rawi-Sukhun.

“The fact that we coexist as a people from different religions was a point we felt we should make to dispel this stereotype.”

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To illustrate their point, they showed a short King’s Academy video called “The beauty in our differences” in which students representing a range of nationalities, religions and backgrounds share how their differences have brought them closer together.

“A lot of teachers find Arabic literature intimidating, they don’t know where to start,” said English teacher Elizabeth Pinto. “So, part of our presentation was giving them an actual unit, a tangible thing that they could take and apply straight away.”

The group explained that the term Arabic literature encompasses literature written in Arabic then translated to English or other world languages, literature written in English by an Arab, and literature that deals with themes from the Arab world.

They distributed all the lesson plans they had brought with them to the conference, and had many requests for more, even receiving emails from teachers — some teaching at college — who hadn’t been in attendance but had heard about the session and were interested in introducing Arabic literature in their classrooms.

They presented the debut novel of Libyan writer Hisham Matar, In the Country of Men, which was nominated for the 2006 Man Booker Prize, translated into 22 languages and awarded a host of international literary prizes. Matar grew up in New York and writes in English.

They also presented the short story, Half a Day, originally written in Arabic by Naguib Mahfouz, the Egyptian winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature.

The poetry they used was that of Naomi Shihab Nye, an award-winning poet, songwriter and novelist who lives in the United States, born to a Palestinian father and American mother. In addition to in-depth presentations on these works, the group provided a list of around 25 other works of Arabic literature.

“The literature we chose is more or less contemporary,” said Rawi-Sukhun. “We didn’t go back to our early literature, which is very interesting, but might put people off because it’s not something they can relate to now.”

As much of the literature they recommended is already taught at King’s, the teachers were able to share their lesson plans with the audience.

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BEYOND KING’S

“At the conference, participants have a thick catalogue of sessions to choose from and there are around 40 workshops taking place at the same time, so we were prepared not to have a big audience,” said English teacher Rola Jaber, adding that they were surprised but thrilled to have 64 teachers in attendance. “Many of the teachers were interested and wanted to learn more. There was a real need.”

After their session, while talking to members of the audience, King’s faculty discovered a large part of that interest was coming from teachers, some residing in rural areas of the US, who — for the first time — were welcoming refugees into their classrooms; they wanted help to understand their students and help them fit in by using books from their part of the world that they could connect to.

“We tried to show that Arab literature is not all that it seems in the media,” said Pinto. “That there is more to Arab literature than politics and violence or any of those other genres that are more frequently portrayed by the media.”

The feedback and interest was everything they had hoped for, said Rawi-Sukhun, who believes that it was their unified and cooperative efforts as a team, comprised of both Arabs and Americans, that had a lot to do with the positive reception, especially with the American members of the team sharing their positive experiences of living in the Middle East.

“The whole point of our presentation was to encourage American teachers to take a risk,” said Head of English Eric Hansen. “It’s so important that they present authentic images and voices from the Arab world beyond what their students see in the news and on TV.” “We wanted to break these barriers,” added Rawi-Sukhun. “We wanted our audience to connect with us and with our literature. We wanted them to see that there are a lot of valuable and lovely things in our literature, and in ourselves, because literature reflects people and cultures.”

“The whole point of our presentation was to encourage American teachers to take a risk. It’s so important that they present authentic images and voices from the Arab world beyond what their students see in the news and on TV.”

KING’S LIST OF MUST-READ ARABIC LITERATURE In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar Women at Point Zero by Nawal Saadawi Returning to Haifa by Ghassan Kanafani Men in the Sun by Ghassan Kanafani Mornings in Jenine by Susan Abulhawa The Cairo Trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz Tigers on the Tenth Day and other short stories by Zakaria Tamer The Prophet by Khalil Gibran Think of Others and other selected poems by Mahmoud Darwish In the Name of Identity by Amin Maalouf On the Hills of God by Ibrahim Fawwal Married to Another Man by Ghada Karmi Children of the Alley by Naguib Mahfouz Cities of Salt by Abdulrahman Munif The Yacouban Building by Alaa Aswani Selected Poems by Adonis Zodiac of Echoes by Khalid Muttawa Fragments of Memory: A Story of a Syrian Family by Hanna Mina Willow Trees Don’t Weep by Fadia Faqir Out of Place by Edward Said Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif One Thousand and One Nights by Hanan Alshaykh

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